What's the best way to get followers for your Blog?

[Darcy Wishard]

I'm new to blogging but I have about 3 years experience doing book reviews for fellow teachers and librarians, students and friends. I want to reach as many people as possible. Any tips from you experienced bloggers out there???
Thanks!
Darcy
http://www.libraryloungelizard.com/

[Constance Reader]

Comment on other peoples' blogs.Follow other people. I think this is the best way to get followers, in my experience.

[Darcy Wishard]

Great, I'm hard at work doing that! Thanks for your imput!

[Trish Collins]

Hi, Darcy! Welcome to book blogging! Unfortunately, I fear you'll find it as addictive as the rest of us have. :-)

I see from your blog that you focus on what I *think* is middle grade books. There's a whole community who focus on that type of book. If you Google kidlit bloggers, that will get you going in the right direction.

As far as traffic is concerned, there's a couple of posts bloggers have written about that:

Presenting Lenore
The Story Siren

Ultimately, though, the best way to get people to read your blog is to write great content and to visit other blogs who have a similar interest as you. Building readership is time consuming!

Let me know if you have any other questions. :-)

[Darcy Wishard]

Yes the addiction is already evident! Yes middle school age range is what I typically read but I love the older teen stuff too (I just can't put them on my shelves!)
The two blogs you mentioned (especially The Story Siren) is what got me interested in posting my reviews in the first place, they have been a great resource when looking for good books to buy!
Thanks for the info and I will gladly contact you when I'm totally confused!
Thank you, thank you!

[Lauren]

Utilize other resources. Open a twitter account and post an update when you put up a new blog. I do that when I've got new content to share and I get 20-30 hits everytime and I have a very small number of people following me on twitter.

You could link a social networking account such as a facebook or myspace page to your blog. Give people as many ways to find your content as possible.

You can also comment on other blogs, guest write for other bloggers, and join groups (such as this one) that are geared towards people who would be interested in your work.

[Darcy Wishard]

Thank you for the tips....I join twitter and linked to my facebook and hopefully after all this I can concentrate on just writing reviews and checking out other blogs. It's easy to get involved in discussions because when you have a book you like in common its easy to talk about it!
Thanks again!

[Katinka Hesselink]

Twitter is important, though I personally don't get 20 click throughs to my blog each time I post something. I get my blogposts automatically posted to twitter. And my tweets automatically posted to facebook (which gets me personally more click throughs). Don't just post your blog there though, enter the conversation - make sure you login at least once a day to reply to other people's tweets, share your thoughts and things like that.

Then you need to learn about SEO - search engine optimization. Aka - the business of getting links to your blog (it helps to comment on other people's blogs and tweet) and the business of optimizing keywords and key phrases.

You should also add the addthis button to all your posts. I added it yesterday and today I find that one person has already clicked on it and bookmarked one of my pages.

And put your blog in your e-mail signature.

[Darcy Wishard]

Wow, thanks for all the great info! I did the "add this" button and joined twitter and did the email thing...now I'm exhausted :o)
Thanks again!

[David Gutowski]

These are great answers, but I agree that good content will draw readers over time.

Add your blog link to your e-mail signature, and make sure it is prominent in any social networking you do. You can integrate your posts to Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace relatively easily as well.

[Emily Veinglory]

The old saying: find a need and fill it. The only blog have that is really popular provides a kind fo information that can't be foudn anywhwere else.